Accidents and similar incidents at work always seem to come attached with the ‘not in my workplace’ attitude. Even if one has not occurred in your workplace as of late, it does not mean that it is not occurring elsewhere.
Did you know that around injuries that occurred at work equate to millions of working days lost due to work-related illness and workplace injury, and even more billions for the estimated cost of injuries and ill health? On top of all this, millions of working people have suffered from a work-related illness, one of the greatest culprits being stress on the job.
Fortunately, many of these types of accidents are preventable. Read on for our tips on how to avoid and prevent injury in your place of work and how to stay safe.
Accidents in the Workplace
In the worst case scenarios, someone could be killed at work in accidents on the job. Another common taker of lives is mesothelioma, a terminal form of cancer caused by the inhalation or ingestion of asbestos fibers. With all of this doom and gloom in mind, it is important to take as many steps as possible to reduce the amount of accidents that occur or could occur within your place of work.
Tips and Tricks on Reducing Accidents
The measures you will have to take to improve health and safety in your workplace will vary greatly depending on where it is you work, and what your field of work is. For example, you would have different risks in an office filled with computers than you would on a construction site. Because of this, we can only offer you a general guide, but the tips and tricks in which will most likely apply to most workplaces. Read on to learn more about preventing workplace accidents, whether you work in an office or somewhere more active.
Make It All Clear
As an employer (and as an employee), it is important to encourage and promote health and safety in the workplace. After all, if you do not think health and safety is important, why should your staff or co-workers?
Hopefully, you have a good health and safety policy set in place. If not, it is essential that you get to it and develop one. You should do your utmost to make this policy readily available and clear to all staff. Make sure that you have it displayed on a staff notice board, or that you have a review of it with all of your staff every month.
The latter is also a good way of hosting a brainstorming session regarding anything new that may need to be added to the policy. For example, if you get a new piece of machinery in, host a review where the risks surrounding the machine can be discussed, and what can be done to avoid any dangers.
As well as making your health and safety policy clear, it is important that any health and safety signs you have dotted around your workplace can be clearly seen by all staff and members of the public. What is the point of having them if they can’t be seen?
Training
There are so many courses available, and it is vitally important that you provide the necessary training for your staff. International Workplace offers a lot of training courses, such as the IOSH-approved managing accidents and incidents eLearning course, which is the perfect introduction into workplace accidents and incidents.
Training courses like this are vital to avoiding accidents and incidents in the workplace. By educating your staff you will help to reduce the chance of an incident, and if something were to happen, they would be in a better position to deal with the issue.
Keep It Correct
A large portion of accidents are caused due to employees not having the correct equipment readily available to them to do their job. As well as ensuring that the equipment is correct and working properly, it is also important to always try and purchase the latest equipment.
For example, using old-fashioned safety gloves could mean that they do not work as well with more modern equipment, meaning that the employees using them could very easily injure themselves. If your budget is a problem for you, look at it this way. Would you rather invest in up-to-date safety equipment or fork out for an employee’s surgery?
You should always discourage employees from taking shortcuts to save time when it comes to safety too. Taking an extra day to finish a project is more important than an employee spending triple that amount of time in hospital because they injured themselves rushing.
As mentioned above, the steps you take to reduce accidents at work will vary massively depending on your industry or discipline. For any further advice on reducing accidents at work, we recommend speaking with a personal injury or employment lawyer. Unfortunately, it often ends up that the consequences of not having a safe workplace are not often realized until they occur.
Failure to take action towards making your workplace safer (and often more efficient and productive) can result in employees becoming a part of the grisly statistics that we mentioned at the start of the article – be it through illness, injury, or death.
With more and more technology being developed every day – that is in regards to safety and the equipment used in the workplace – it is vital that you keep yourself up to date with all things health and safety, before it is too late.
You should be leaving all of the hard work to the professionals, while you can focus on the most important thing: making a full and speedy recovery. If you were involved in an accident at your place of employment and believe you could be entitled to appropriate compensation for your losses, you should contact the Law Offices of Kirshner, Groff, and Diaz as soon as possible. Every initial consultation carries no obligation to continue with our services. You will have the opportunity to speak about your case directly with a real attorney.
